The UAE has been named as the Middle East's top country for doing business in the latest ranking, in which UAE is on 21st place globally, published by the World Bank.

The study concluded that the UAE undertook four reforms in the past 12 months to make businesses more possible and more accessible. The changes also include strengthening construction quality control and reducing the time to obtain a building permit.

Moreover, the report states that over the 15 years of the World Bank's report, which monitors the ease of doing business for small and medium companies on the global scale. Overall the UAE has undertaken the most substantial number of reforms comprising 33 in the Gulf region. The reforms resulted in a more comfortable business that takes 17 days on average to start in the region, compared to 43 days in 2003. Moreover, the registration itself may be completed in one day or few days depending on the type of registration now.

Also, various reforms were carried out on Starting a Business in the past year. Highlights of the six reforms carried out in this area included the establishment of a one-stop shop and an improved process of registering a business online.

The Middle East and North Africa region performed well in the areas of Dealing with Construction Permits, Getting Electricity, Registering Property and Paying Taxes.

Other countries in the latest ranking of the World Bank came up with the following results. India ranked 100th, up more than 30 places, and was among the top ten most-improved, having implemented eight reforms between 2016 and 2017. India also had the highest score in South Asia for protecting minority investors.

Mainland China, the world's second-largest economy, held steady at 78th and scored a low 172nd in for dealing with construction permits, even though the country's recent building boom helped propel economic growth. With reference to the World Bank, Beijing and Shanghai perform below international best-practices, with 23 steps and 249 days required to obtain a permit and related costs amounting to 7.8 per cent of the cost of actual construction. Russia moved up to 35th out of 190 countries in the World Bank's 2018 business rankings, from 40th in 2017.

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